Graduating college seniors face a grim job market little improved since President Barack Obama’s reelection, and many say they are concerned about their future.

The effective unemployment rate, referred to as U-6, now stands at 15.6 percent for the youth, ages 18 to 29. U-6 adjusts for labor force participation by including those who have given up looking for work. That rate since 2012 has only improved slightly, from 16.4 percent.

The unemployment picture for others in this age group remains stubbornly high. For African Americans, the U-6 rate is at 23.6 percent, the rate for Hispanics stands at 16.2 percent and the rate for women is currently at 13.3 percent.

College seniors are frustrated by their inability to land a job.

Lauren Dwyer of Hampshire, Ill., who is graduating from Aurora University this week with a major in English Education, has yet to find a job. She said she has been looking since March.

“I applied to 50 jobs and have had no interviews,” Dwyer said. “It’s very competitive. I’ve been told there are roughly over 1,000 applications applying to teaching jobs every day.”

Dwyer has $25,000 in student loans she must start repaying in October. She says she will be living at home with her parents. “I knew it would take some effort, but I didn’t know it would be this difficult” to find a job, she said.

Justin Roth, of Lancaster, Pa., who is graduating from Lebanon Valley College, is in a similar position. Roth has landed an internship, which he said was not an easy task. While interning, he hopes to network for a full-time job. “I’m looking for a full-time job, and hopefully can get one from a client,” Roth said.

Like Dwyer, Roth said he will move back home and hopefully will move out on his own if he gets a full-time job.

According to Generation Opportunity, 1.916 million young adults are not counted as “unemployed” by the U.S. Department of Labor because they are not in the labor force. These young people have given up searching for work due to the lack of jobs.

“It’s very frustrating. Sometimes the official unemployment rate goes down because people stop looking and older people decide to retire. Young people can’t retire,” said Corie Whalen, spokesperson for Generation Opportunity.

Even more alarming is how many college graduates are stuck in positions that are unrelated to their field of study.

“Young people aren’t even using their college degrees in their work,” Whalen said. The latest data shows approximately 50 percent of young people are in that situation.

The struggle is not limited to college graduates.

Adele Coghlan, 18, of Chester, Pa., will be attending Westchester University in the fall and majoring in psychology. She has been looking for work to support herself and save for college. She has been unsuccessful.

“It’s really hard. I’m from a small town. The first day an ad goes up, the job is taken,” Coghlan said. She said the prospects for her future “really concerns me.”

“I do not want to be a boomerang,” Coghlan said, “I don’t want to return home when I am done with college.” But that is a distinct possibility, according to Coghlan. “That’s an issue for a lot of people. They want to be independent, but the job market is so tough right now.” Many of her friends, she said, are in the same situation as she is.

“My parents provide for me,” Coghlan said. “I feel bad about it. I have siblings and I should be able to support myself. I feel bad that I am taking away from my brothers,” Coghlan said.

Don’t believe the happy talk coming out of the White House, Federal Reserve and Treasury Department when it comes to the real unemployment rate and the true “Misery Index.” Because, according to an influential Wall Street advisor, the figures are a fraud.

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In a memo to clients provided to Secrets, David John Marotta calculates the actual unemployment rate of those not working at a sky-high 37.2 percent, not the 6.7 percent advertised by the Fed, and the Misery Index at over 14, not the 8 claimed by the government.

Marotta, who recently advised those worried about an imploding economy to get a gun, said that the government isn’t being honest in how it calculates those out of the workforce or inflation, the two numbers used to get the Misery Index figure.

“The unemployment rate only describes people who are currently working or looking for work,” he said. That leaves out a ton more.

“Unemployment in its truest definition, meaning the portion of people who do not have any job, is 37.2 percent. This number obviously includes some people who are not or never plan to seek employment. But it does describe how many people are not able to, do not want to or cannot find a way to work. Policies that remove the barriers to employment, thus decreasing this number, are obviously beneficial,” he and colleague Megan Russell in their new investors note from their offices in Charlottesville, Va.

They added that “officially-reported unemployment numbers decrease when enough time passes to discourage the unemployed from looking for work. A decrease is not necessarily beneficial; an increase is clearly detrimental.”

Then there is the Misery Index, which is a calculation based in inflation and unemployment, both numbers the duo say are underscored by the government. He said that the Index doesn’t properly calculate how Uncle Sam is propping up the economy with bond purchases and other actions.

“These tricks, along with a host of other dubious accounting schemes, underreport inflation by about 3 percent,” they wrote, adding that the official inflation rate is just 1.24 percent.

“Today, the Misery Index would be 7.54 using official numbers,” they wrote. But if calculations tabulating the full national unemployment including discouraged workers, which is 10.2 percent, and the historical method of calculating inflation, which is now 4.5 percent, “the current misery index is closer to 14.7, worse even than during the Ford administration.”

Not surprisingly, Wall Street looks a little wobbly at the opening bell this morning. This follows a previous negative session buoyed only partially by the Federal Reserve’s latest helicopter drop of printing press cash. The reason for the continued negativity should be fairly obvious by now. Stock futures are falling as the partial shutdown of the U.S. government drags on for a third day.

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The government shutdown, originally estimated to last a day or two by most analysts and pundits, looks to be more lengthy now, perhaps considerably so, as the main aim of President Obama and the Senate Democrats seems to be the destruction of the Republican party, regardless of the economic and social consequences. While the shutdown itself is estimated to trim only about 0.2 percent from the gross domestic product each week, that could grow worse if the impasse begins to erode consumer and business confidence.

That was essentially the message from the National Retail Federation, which releases its sales forecast for the next two months on Thursday. Matthew Shay, the group’s president and CEO, said the calculations were made before the shutdown.

The President himself, as has been his custom over the past five years, won’t condescend to dirty his political hands over the budget mess that both he and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have kept at a boil by refusing to pass a real budget as Congress is required to. Budgets – and of course, budget ceilings – exist for them only as theoretical limits on the U.S. Treasury’s printing presses as well as convenient opportunities to unite with the lapdog media in attacking Republicans for the problems the Democrats themselves have caused and refuse to remedy.

Obama kept the pot at a boil yesterday, making deliberately provocative comments to the press based on lies, evasions, and half-truths, as is his custom.

In a CNBC interview, Obama said, “When you have a situation in which a faction is willing to default on U.S. obligations, then we are in trouble.” That “faction,” of course, is the Tea Party whose position has never included a “willingness” to default. They simply want to slow the increase in the debt ceiling by trading current increases for further tax cuts.

“I am exasperated with the idea that unless I say that 20 million people, ‘you can’t have health insurance, they will not reopen the government,’” Obama continued. “That is irresponsible.” This, of course, is another astonishingly transparent lie. No one on Capitol Hill in either party as ever said that Americans “can’t have health insurance.” The Republican opposition is simply stating the obvious, namely that the reckless, out-of-control Affordable Care Act, more un-popularly known as Obamacare, is not the way to go about it.

No matter. Obama continued to bore in on this phony scenario on CNBC and elsewhere Wednesday. “If we get into the habit where one party is allowed to extort, …then any president who comes after me we be unable to govern effectively,” Obama said. Seriously?

Commenting on the entire current impasse, he recklessly observed, “this time I think Wall Street should be concerned.” Surely even this president must be aware that responsible high government officials must never shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Or in a life-and-death market of stocks and bonds on Wall Street which, while wobbling lately, is still the financial capital of the world.

But none of this matters to the first American president who longs for the dictatorial powers possessed by his counterpart in the once and future Soviet Union. The prime obstacle to the happiness of this obstinate, childish president is the existence of an opposition party in this country. All other hopes and goals are in the end irrelevant.

The complete and utter destruction of the Republican Party is the only game in town as it has been for nearly five years, despite this president’s constant claim “I have tried to work with the Republicans.” That, in fact, is the biggest lie of all.

All of which leaves the stock market trading on political rumors and news, not on facts, figures, and values. Aside from nimble trading here and there, investing in the old-fashioned sense is just too dangerous right now.

Compounding the problem is the fact that even that old standby, that old “store of value” known as gold has been trading strangely for well over a year now, clearly the subject of some kind of massive, coordinated, and likely illegal maneuvering that regulatory institutions seem uninterested in resolving.

This leaves almost nowhere for concerned investors to go, save for the generous 0.01 percent interest they’re earning on their money market accounts, even as regulators quietly plan to destroy this hiding place as well by forcing the traditional $1 peg to float, thus terminating the usefulness of this vehicle as a holding mechanism.

No trading hints or recommendations this morning. It’s just too iffy, and it’s likely to remain that way as the Democrats and their President refuse to negotiate with the Republicans while blaming the Republicans for refusing to negotiate.

Politics hasn’t been this disgusting in Washington since the waning days of the Buchanan Administration. As the President dithered and failed to lead, Congress disintegrated, and half its members trotted off to found another country. Times are different now, but perhaps we’re watching a very different kind of instant replay.

The Federal Reserve announced it would spend $40 billion a month on bond purchases in an effort to stimulate the economy and drive the the unemployment rate down.

The Wall Street Journal says that unlike the first two rounds of Quantitative Easing, this time the Fed will focus solely on buying mortgage-backed securities.

In its statement, the Federal Reserve said the economy was growing but at a sluggish pace.

“The Committee is concerned that, without further policy accommodation, economic growth might not be strong enough to generate sustained improvement in labor market conditions,” the Federal Open Market Committee said. Remember the Fed has a dual mandate from Congress: keep inflation and the unemployment rate in check.

This action also represents an open-ended commitment on the part of the Federal Reserve, which said it was not concerned about inflation at this time.

“If the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially, the Committee will continue its purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities, undertake additional asset purchases, and employ its other policy tools as appropriate until such improvement is achieved in a context of price stability,” the Fed said. That last line means that the Fed promises to tweak this program if inflation begins to be a problem.

Another big announcement, is that the Federal Reserve will keep its federal funds rate at near zero through mid-2015.

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